The Little Willingness

Chapter 18 – 4. The Little Willingness

The holy instant is the result of your determination to be holy. It is the
answer. The desire and the willingness to let it come precede its coming.
 
You prepare your mind for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want
it above all else. It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is necessary
that you realize that you cannot do more. Do not attempt to give the Holy
Spirit what he does not ask, or you will add the ego to him and confuse the
two. He asks but little. It is he who adds the greatness and the might. He
joins with you to make the holy instant far greater than you can understand.
It is your realization that you need do so little that enables him to give so
much.
 
Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly
your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be
not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could
come without them you would not need the holy instant. Come to it not in
arrogance, assuming that you must achieve the state its coming brings with
it. The miracle of the holy instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it
is. And in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as
you were meant to be.
 
Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does
require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of
you. Your difficulty with the holy instant arises from your fixed conviction
that you are not worthy of it. And what is this but the determination to be as
you would make yourself? God did not create his dwelling place unworthy
of him. And if you believe he cannot enter where he wills to be, you must
be interfering with his will. You do not need the strength of willingness to
come from you, but only from his will.
 
The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. It is
always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited
power of God’s Will. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to
prepare yourself for him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for
holiness, and not believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for
peace. God has established them. They do not wait upon your willingness
for what they are. Your willingness is needed only to make it possible to
teach you what they are. If you maintain you are unworthy of learning this,
you are interfering with the lesson by believing that you must make the
learner different. You did not make the learner, nor can you make him
different. Would you first make a miracle yourself, and then expect one to
be made for you?
 
You merely ask the question. The answer is given. Seek not to answer, but
merely to receive the answer as it is given. In preparing for the holy instant,
do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it. That is but to
confuse your role with God’s. Atonement cannot come to those who think
that they must first atone, but only to those who offer it nothing more than
simple willingness to make way for it. Purification is of God alone, and
therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare yourself for him, try to think
thus:
 
I who am host to God am worthy of him.
He who established His dwelling place in me
created it as he would have it be.
 
It is not needful that I make it ready for him,
but only that I do not interfere with his plan to restore to me
my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.
 
I need add nothing to his plan.
 
But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it.
 
And that is all. Add more, and you will merely take away the little that is
asked. Remember you made guilt, and that your plan for the escape from
guilt has been to bring Atonement to it, and make salvation fearful. And it is
only fear that you will add, if you prepare yourself for love. The preparation
for the holy instant belongs to him who gives it. Release yourself to him
whose function is release. Do not assume his function for him. Give him but
what he asks, that you may learn how little is your part, and how great is
his.
 
It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make it
difficult because you insist there must be more that you need do, and it is
very hard for you to realize it is not personally insulting that your
contribution and the Holy Spirit’s are so extremely disproportionate. You
are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the
truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need
understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you
cannot give right now.
 
Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that is natural
and easy for you impossible. If you believe the holy instant is difficult for
you, it is because you have become the arbiter of what is possible, and
remain unwilling to give place to One Who knows. The whole belief in
orders of difficulty in miracles is centered on this. Everything God wills is
not only possible, but has already happened. And that is why the past has
gone. It never happened in reality. Only in your mind, which thought it did,
is its undoing needful.